Al Qaeda financier held in Yemen

Sanaa, June 14 (DPA) Yemeni police have detained a Saudi man suspected to be the main financier of Al Qaeda operations in Yemen and neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the defence ministry said Sunday. It said in a statement posted on its website that the suspect, identified as Hassan Hussein bin Alwan, was “the financier of the operations carried out by members of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia”.

It further described him as “one of the most dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists”. The statement gave no further details on the suspect or location of the arrest.

A security source told DPA that the arrest took place in the desert province of Marib, some 190 km northwest of the capital Sanaa Friday.

In January, Yemen launched a countrywide manhunt for Yemeni and Saudi fugitive Al Qaeda members after the group announced the merger of its branches in Yemen and Saudi Araiba into the ‘Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’.

The new group, headed by Nasser al-Wahishi, former secretary of Osama bin Laden, is believed to have some 1,200 militants from both countries hiding in four desert provinces in north and east of Yemen.

Yemen, a close US-ally in the “fight against terrorism”, was itself the scene of deadly attacks in recent months.